


All That Was

by trucizna



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Feral!Spock, M/M, Surrealism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 16:59:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4027744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trucizna/pseuds/trucizna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Perhaps the loss of my planet has affected me more than I initially believed.”</p>
<p>A Vulcan scientist is assigned to the Enterprise to assist with recovery efforts. Spock begins to fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All That Was

* * *

The Captain is smiling, holding a PADD in one hand and running the other through his hair briefly. Usually this means he is nervous, but he has not shown these signs during our conversations for quite some time.

“I got something good for you, Spock. Here, check this out. New orders.”

I take the proffered PADD from him and skim through it. Starfleet has issued orders to divert scientific manpower and resources to preserving and cultivating as much of Vulcan as possible to assist with the foundation of a new Vulcan colony. As I scroll through the missive, I see that this includes surviving Vulcan scientists being assigned to strategic starships as well as DNA retrieval from Memory Alpha. Further details are included, but I hand the PADD back to Jim, a tight sensation in my throat.

“They’ve asked the Enterprise to head it up. Which, naturally, means you at the lead.”

I blink, the only sign of my surprise. “What of my duties as first officer?”

“I already took care of it. Uhura’s going to cover them. Think of it as she gets some command experience and you get to help out the resettlement of your people. It all works out. She’s an excellent candidate.”

I do not know what to say.

“Is that a problem, Commander?” His voice has dropped to indicate the seriousness of the question. I realize, after over a year working with him, that this is his manner of giving me a ‘way out’, so to speak, rather than chastising me. Also, he is aware that Nyota and I are no longer pursuing a romantic relationship and is under the mistaken belief that this will affect our professional behavior.

“There is no problem, Captain.”

“Good.” He claps me on the shoulder, and I am ready for it this time. He hands the PADD back to me. “Study up. We’re en route to pick up your Vulcan scientist now. Her name is T’Pira, and she specializes in xenobotany but is, and I quote, ‘proficient in xenobiology as well as Vulcan native botany and zoology’.”

“Her qualifications seem impressive.”

Jim scoffs, “You’ll give her a run for her money.”

* * *

The cup is octagonal, of an ancient design. My familiarity with pottery is too poor to determine its age, but T’Pira assures me it is quite genuine. She is ‘lucky’--though she does not say so with such phrasing--that she was on assignment off planet during the destruction of Vulcan and that, however impractically, she had taken some of her heirlooms with her.

Not many.

Not enough.

She knows--as I know, as we all know--that items themselves hold no intrinsic emotional value. There is no more culture in the cup--striped in grey and desert red--than there is in the bulwark of this ship.

She serves us tea in them. The tea is strong and deep in flavor, the leaves clearly from Vulcan itself. I do not speak of value, nor culture. She does not either.

* * *

We have a multitude of soil samples from New Vulcan, as well as seeds from Vulcan and other planets with similar climates.  There are several humans helping us with our experiments, but for the most part T’Pira and I are alone in the laboratory. The silence between us is comfortable, cultural. I have forgotten what it is like to work with one of my kind.

The specialized lights for the plants hum in a pleasant way against the buzz of incubators and spectrometers.

* * *

Kirk collapses onto the floor, and as this is increasingly his habit I am no longer alarmed. His hand is clenched to his side, but he’s grinning up at me.

“Ugh, Spock, I fucking missed you. Missed _this_.” He waves vaguely across the sparring mat.

I find myself looking down at him, and instead of my usual need to assess for injuries I feel a thrum of contentment, like eating a satisfying meal after a long day.

I wonder if this is what sex is supposed to feel like.

 

* * *

I am surprised to find myself ignoring T’Pira. I cannot think of the last time I ignored someone without intent. I have to pull from my short-term memory to recall her recent words and respond to her comment appropriately. These seeds will do well on New Vulcan, indeed.

“Are you well?” She says, her eyes flat as always. As Vulcan eyes always are.

“Of course.” I reply. Flat as always. As my human eyes always are.

* * *

The tea is hot in my hands. I hold it between them, allowing the warmth to permeate my cold fingers. The tea is a perfect ending to a long day working with minutiae, and though the laboratory has temporarily been made significantly warmer in order to duplicate growing temperatures on New Vulcan, I still find the heat of the tea a welcome pleasure.

T’Pira offers me another cup. I did not know I missed this aspect of Vulcan company and taste.

“Do you plan to return to New Vulcan after our research is complete?” She asks politely.

“Not at this time. My place is here.”

She cannot know about my alternate self, of course. She does not respond.

* * *

There’s a pressure building. The only word I can think to describe it is _satisfaction_. There is a primal, subconscious thing that feeds when I spar. It reaches, it years to be freed.

Then suddenly it is.

I was always so careful with him, this frail, pale human with too-blonde hair and too-blue eyes. So aware of the brittleness of his bones, the delicate lines of blood sheening blue just under his thin skin.

I cannot conceive of why. This is battle, and battles must be won.

  
I surge forward. This human is on the defensive, something lights up in his eyes and I see a shared warrior sense. The connection, the revelation of a love of brutality. It spurs me onwards. I finally allow each fist to connect, the sound meaty, tantalizing. The whoosh of breath as it abandons his frail human lungs pulls my lips from my teeth in dirty satisfaction.

I now have plenty of time to turn my back in a roundhouse kick; with no breath the human will not be able to react quickly enough to block my heel as it careens into his side.

He falls--crumples, to be accurate--into the wall behind him and then into a haphazard pile onto the mat. He barely lasted forty two seconds. I scan the room for an additional challenge and find it empty. The primal, beautiful thing slinks back into me. Sated at last.

I blink, breathe, satisfied.

My Captain is still. Too still. His eyes are closed, skin rapidly paling under the sheen of sweat. His chest is a thrill of red splotches, quickly swelling and darkening. There is blood on his lips.

His eyes are closed. His chest is still.

I am on my knees before him, I do not notice the Vulcan streaming from my mouth, I have no idea what I am saying, but my hands are gentle on his neck, his chest, his face, and his name is at least every third word. “No” features heavily, I believe.

=====

“Spock, stop pacing. He’ll be okay. Just give it time.”

I am pacing. I never pace. I force myself to stop moving, to breathe. Was it always this difficult?

“Spock. Hey, Spock. Look at me.” I do. “Are you okay?”

“I am well,” I snap. I _snap_. Foolish human idioms applied to my dictation. Logically, I should expect to become ‘snippy’ next.

* * *

T’Pira is the perfect lab partner. She does not speak unless absolutely necessary, her notes are immaculate.  

The silence is true beauty.

She makes us tea after nearly every session in the labs. She must be growing her own leaves to have so many. I find myself unreasonably glad she had the foresight.

* * *

Jim comes to visit me in my quarters. I am unaccustomed to feeling this much shame--and there is no other word for it.

“Spock,” his left eye is purple, swollen. His left arm is in a sling. “Would you like a game of chess?”

“Captain, you still wish to spend time with me after--”

“Yes. I know what I’m doing when I ask you to spar. I know what you’re capable of. You took down Khan, remember?”

I will never forget. Though, increasingly, I am not sure I know what I am capable of anymore.

My hands shake when I unpack the chess board.

He speaks of Uhura’s performance on the bridge, of the mediocrity of her temporary replacement at communications. He speaks of our upcoming survey of a desert continent for T’Pira and my project. I listen, though I find my attention wandering.

Jim doesn’t seem to mind.

* * *

Even before the dust of battle has settled, my hand is on Jim's arm, pulling him to his feet. My Captain is unharmed.

T'Pira saved him.

"Where did you learn that fighting technique?" I ask. I am brusque. I intend to be.

It is possible--likely--that everyone present on the away team can tell that I am impressed with T’Pira’s efficient disposal of our attackers. It is unlike me to show such emotion in front of so many others.

She says nothing, wiping her blade on her victim's sleeve with precise movements before sheathing the weapon under her robes.

"Not on Vulcan, I can tell you that much," Kirk murmurs, forgetting she can hear him.

We hurriedly pack up our samples and prepare to beam back to the ship. I do not realize I am still gripping Jim's upper arm tightly until he casually asks for it back.

* * *

I wake suddenly, but remain still. Someone is humming nearby.

The tune is achingly familiar, and it feels like a brand on my soul. It is a tune my mother hummed to me as a child. She used to say she couldn’t remember all the words.

I used to think it foolish she attempted to sing it at all, then. I was so young.

I open my eyes. She is sitting next to my bed in a chair that was not there before. It’s aluminum, but brushed and twisted to look like very old wicker. She looks as she did the day she died, but without fear.

When she sees me awake she smiles. My heart clenches.

  
“Mother?”

“Spock,” she says, her smile beatific. “Why didn’t you save me?”

And suddenly she is gone. My hand is still reaching out to her, an echo of the moment on the transporter pad when she first disappeared into nothing.

* * *

To say I am distracted would not be completely accurate. I have, for the first time in my memory, entirely mixed up two samples. Fortunately, I have only confused their notes and not the samples themselves. The mistake is relatively easy to rectify. The burn in my face, however, is not.

“Spock,” T’Pira is suddenly there, her blank face beautiful and stoic as always. “We need to speak of what ails you.”

“Nothing ails me,” I lie. It is not possible to speak of something that has not been identified, however.

“It is not logical to deny difficulties. It is not logical to deny how Vulcan has affected you.”

What slips through me is almost relief. “Perhaps the loss of my planet has affected me more than I initially believed.”

She nods, the closest thing to sympathy her Vulcan face will display. She has already put away her tools.

“It has affected us all. Come,” She says, “let us finish our work for the day. Have tea with me.”

* * *

Jim’s eye is still yellowed when he asks me to spar again.

I say no.

* * *

Jim’s arm is fully healed when he asks me to play chess with him.

I say yes.

I lose.

There is a look in Jim’s eyes I cannot decipher.

* * *

We are attempting to determine if a foreign species of large, meaty succulent will become invasive if brought to New Vulcan. Tests, of course, are inconclusive. T'Pira is currently assessing the risk to the planet if the answer is yes--testing for known predators from sample sets of both flora and fauna while I assess compatibility with native species. Her back is to me, at a computer across the room. It is early in the ship's night, but long after the human lab workers have retired for the day.

Her hair, as always, is piled elaborately on top of her head, a delicate silver chain holding the twists in place and setting off the blackness of the strands. I inadvertently compare her to T'Pring and find I am not disappointed.

Something moves out if the corner of my eye and I look down at the workbench. The succulent is suddenly wilting before my eyes, shriveling, its once-fat, thickly spiked leaves shrinking into delicate, ashy strands which withdraw rapidly into themselves before sinking into something swirling, dark and black. It looks exactly like a tiny black hole.

I cry out, alarmed, as the soil the plant was in begins to be sucked into the tiny singularity. I find myself standing and moving back so suddenly my seat is knocked backwards with a crash.

"Spock! What is it?" T'Pira has turned my direction, her eyes large.

"The sample, it--" I look back to the workbench to see the succulent exactly where it had been, unperturbed, no singularity in sight.

"I must be fatigued, I… nevermind."

"You have been working very hard." I half expect her to mention the impediment of my human heritage but she does not, to her credit. "It is natural to feel its toll. Will you join me for tea before we retire?"

It is a welcome ritual by now. I agree.

As I follow her out of the laboratory I fail to resist looking back at the unmarred, pristine workbench behind me.

* * *

Though the tea is relaxing, I find I am unable to meditate. This happens on occasion. It is a common reaction to physical stress, which I am clearly exposed to during this current assignment.

I sleep instead.

* * *

I am alone in the garden on our estate just outside Shi’Kahr, I-Chaya sprawled languidly at my feet. The sun is rising, the Linasa blooming all around. My mother prided herself on her garden, her ability to make things grow in such an 'unwelcoming conditions'. It occurs to me in my adulthood that she may have included my childhood in that statement.

The city glows in the distance. It takes me a few minutes to realize that this is because it is on fire.

I watch it burn.

* * *

“Spock, you okay?”

Why do people continue to ask me this?

“Of course.”

“It’s your turn.”

“Apologies, Captain.” I move a pawn without considering my following move at all. I catch the way he is looking at me yet cannot identify why it causes me such irritation.

* * *

Though he is fully healed, I turn down his invitation to spar.

* * *

The sample today stays at it should be. I do not know what I expected.

This is reality.

* * *

I burn. Everything burns. There is an agitation that manifests in the shaking of my hands, in the gritting of my teeth. Though some of the symptoms make me naturally think of The Time, this disease does not quite fit that diagnosis. It occurs to me, distantly, that I should contact Doctor McCoy. I dismiss the idea out of hand.

I fold my hands tightly behind my back. It stops the shaking. My jaw creaks. Jim is looking at me, always looking, and something tight and green surges behind my eyes. He should be looking out at the stars, the bridge’s viewscreen instead. He is my Captain, and my Captain only, and nothing gives him the right to judge me. To punish me. I am not currently acting as his first officer. I owe him nothing.

Is that sadness in his eyes? Since when have I attributed such emotions to human facial expressions? It is only practical to do so, to know how to appropriately respond in a human setting.

  
What would T’Pira say? What does it matter?

When I think of the point of her ear, the curve of her cheek--The captain’s curved ear and sharper jaw come to mind instead.

It must be my human half, interfering. I dismiss myself from the bridge. I do not belong here.

* * *

When he kisses me I find I am not as surprised as I should be. He is looking, always looking at me. This is manifest of human sexual interest, after all.

What surprises me is when I kiss him back. I press into him, surging, until his back is against the bulkhead, my knee suddenly between his legs and I do not know whether his toes are still on the floor. I do not care. He flexes against the wall, pushing back as much as his pathetic human strength allows.

There is something in the coil of his muscles I find charming. He tastes toxic. I need more.

My teeth move across his jaw, his neck, and latch on. He hisses but does not stop his erotic squirming. When I pick him up bodily, my hands under his thighs, he laughs in what is likely delight before losing his breath as I toss him onto his bed.

There is buzzing in my ears, green behind my eyes. I pulse with it.

* * *

I am not sated.

When he challenges me to spar the next day, I accept.

It ends in blood--red and green and mostly red--and sex and his joyous laughter.

* * *

T’Pira does not look at me any differently. I do not expect her to. Her dark eyes are hard and unchanging. I find comfort in them.

* * *

He might have died. This time, he might have truly died. He is lucky to have lived, I am told.

The Doctor is shouting. At me, at Jim, at me again. Jim is saying something about it being okay, not Spock’s fault, he is not a child, but McCoy’s anger overrides him in volume if nothing else. There is something about charges being mentioned.

I find I do not care. I look into Jim’s swollen eyes, his bleeding face, the mottling of his torso and feel curled satisfaction.

* * *

As soon as he is released from sickbay he initiates sex again. I am not gentle with his broken body.

He says something to me, something like “Hey, Spock, wait”. I do not listen. I cannot listen.

* * *

The tea does nothing to calm me as we sit, as always, across from each other in her temporary quarters. T’Pira must see it, she must see the change in me, but she says nothing.

Behind her there is a black hole, ominous and threatening. I should warn her. I do not.

It could swallow us both.

I sit alone, later, as if I were meditating. I do not enter even the first level. I can feel the black hole behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck, on my arms, are on high alert. I hear my mother singing a mournful tune I have never heard.

I sit on crumbling rock.

I close my eyes.

I am on the bridge. Jim is saying my name, his hand is on my arm. I find myself irritated by it and shrug him off. There is something in his eyes I have not the patience to identify, his mouth is moving and I hear the words but disregard them just as quickly.

“Excuse me,” I say, and turn and leave. Halfway through the journey in the turbolift I realize I had been in the middle of reporting our findings to him. T’Pira can do it just as well. I must meditate, the thought nags at me. I dismiss it.

I do not go to my quarters. I go to the gym and destroy three punching bags, the synthetic sand and plaster sprawling across the once-smooth flooring.

I am not sated. My knuckles drip green and black. _I am not sated_. The world is green and black. A vortex behind every door.

I run.

* * *

Jim is here, _Jim is here_ and his hands are out in front of him, open and placating. His voice is soft. I can still hear him though he is across the room. There may be a wild animal nearby but I cannot understand why that matters, why Jim is here. He is in danger.

I rush forward, needing to put myself between him and danger. _Danger_. Everywhere. The black hole grows in size, has been growing since that day in the laboratories, I didn’t realize at first, it will swallow him. It will swallow us all. I cannot save us. I cannot save anyone.

Before I get into arm’s reach I see that his eyes are wide, so wide, so blue, and his hand is on a phaser.

He shoots me.

* * *

* * *

When I wake, T’Pira is sitting next to me. I am in sickbay, the ceiling a swirl of light, my limbs in restraints. She has tea in her hands.

“You were saying my name,” she says blandly. There is something in her eyes, something new, something slightly less empty. She’s leaning forward, tea steaming between us.

“I have tea for you.” She says redundantly.

Tea, however traditional, has never helped me before and I expect nothing different now. I pull at the restraints, testing them. They hold.

I look at the cup. I look at the cup and the whorl that looks like a cyclone in grey on the sandy red surface. Or a fingerprint left accidentally. The other cup does not have that pattern. I always, always drink out of this one. Understanding hits me sideways and settles in between the fog. But there is a singularity thrumming at my back making it hard to focus.

“Where is Jim?”

She frowns. It twists her features. “Do you not have something to say to me? You were saying my name. You called for me.”

“No.”

“Vulcan,” she says suddenly, the teacup beginning to tremble slightly in her grip, “is it about Vulcan?”

The singularity. My mother. Everything is always about Vulcan.

“Is that why you did it?” I ask through the fog, the surging of the black hole behind me.

“What do you mean?”

“Why you poisoned me.”

There’s a crash, so loud my ears ring, and the mug with the grey swirls is shattered on the ground and T’Pira is in my lap. Strangling me. My limbs jerk uselessly against the cuffs.

“You showed no remorse for what you did!” Her voice is level, her eyes wild, her teeth bright. The black hole is now pulsing in my mouth, my throat. I cannot breathe. Something is shrieking in the background--a trill of beeps and pain--as it gets sucked into the vortex of nothing that has haunted me all this time. My vision goes green.

“You murdered our people, my _bondmate_! You brought the wrath of the Romulans upon us when we did _nothing_ and you did _nothing to stop it_. You deserve worse than death, you _traitor_. You deserve to suffer for what you did to me!”

A door bursts open, a shout. Everything goes quietly, blissfully black.

* * *

“I wanted to hear it,” she says quietly. “I wanted him to confess, to feel remorse. I wanted to see him break.”

It’s more than she’s ever said before. She speaks clearly despite her split lip, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance between Jim’s head and mine. I don’t know when she got the injury, but I notice Jim has a matching one--his and hers in red and green--on his knuckles. She’s flanked by security and in handcuffs. I cannot reconcile this demure, defeated Vulcan with the one who was strangling me minutes (hours?) ago.

Minutes. The black hole is still clawing at my throat.

Doctor McCoy, standing several feet away and looking at a PADD, answers a question I did not hear, “impedrezene and tropolisine were both found in his system and in the tea. I looked, there have been no studies of what happens when the two are combined, but at the levels in his blood she must have been giving ‘em to him for a long time.”

Hours have passed, then, for him to have completed the tests. I’m standing next to Jim, staring at T’Pira through the glass of the brig. I do not know how or when I got here. I do not remember being released from sick bay.

“What do they do?” Jim’s eyes, glacier-cold, don’t leave hers.

“Impedrezene suppresses higher brain function in humans--who knows what it does to Vulcans. Tropolisine is a nasty hallucinogenic.” He turns to me, “You know, Spock, this explains a lot.”

She continues, nearly muttering now, “I wanted him to burn as I did when Vulcan fell. I wanted him to feel the rage and hatred of six billion lost souls.”

“He already felt that when he lost his planet and his _mother_ , you _bitch_.” Jim hisses.

I find myself exhausted. My head throbs, my mouth is raw. It hurts to swallow and to breathe. Jim’s hand is suddenly on my arm, pulling gently. There is fury and something else in his eyes, something like concern. It’s a relief to me that I can see him again.

  
“I can see you, Jim.”

“I know,” he says gently. I look up, we are in my quarters. He is waiting patiently for me to pass the threshold, his hand loose on my wrist. We both know he cannot make me do anything--I am several factors stronger than he will ever be--and the fact that he is willing to be near me at all after what I did to him--

I remember everything I did to him.

“How?” I begin, clumsily, “how can you be near me after what I did to you?”

“Because it wasn’t you. And hell, Spock, I liked a lot of it.” His smile cuts me.

I swallow. It hurts.

“C’mon, get in bed or Bones’ll make me bring you back to sickbay.” So Jim fought for my release. I find I am grateful. There were too many lights--there is no black hole in here, not anymore.

I sit on the edge of the bed and Jim sits with me.

I do not deserve this kindness.

“Yes, you do.”

* * *

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The plot of this was shamelessly inspired by part of The Arrangement by Maldoror (Gundam Wing fandom), one of my favorite works of fiction ever. You should read it, it’s amazing and epic and guh. It starts a little slow but is worth it.  
> http://kracken.bonpublishing.com/fiction/gw/Maldoror/index.shtml


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